


Something Safe

by Taliyahh



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, a lot of rumination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-16 08:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16082411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taliyahh/pseuds/Taliyahh
Summary: In which Keith and Shiro are in love but are having a difficult time realizing it.





	1. Something I Never Said Before

**Author's Note:**

> My first finished Voltron fic(let)!  
> It's meant to take place during season 7 and sort of explain why Shiro moved lions.  
> If you couldn’t tell by the titles, this was inspired heavily by Troye Sivan’s song ‘Animal’. You should listen to that and cry with me.  
> Oh yeah, I’m seriously-sheith on Tumblr btw! Hi!

They are traveling through space, like drifters in a vast unending ocean. Keith is in his seat, focused only on piloting a lion that is on auto-pilot for if he dared to stop, dared to turn, dared to look at Shiro on his right, there would be no turning back. It doesn’t feel like the right time to face him. It never has.

Krolia heads to bed after bidding the two a good night. Keith isn’t sure if he should feel pleased or apprehensive about the prospect of time with Shiro. The expression on Krolia’s face before she leaves is knowing. Keith chooses to ignore it.

With Krolia now absent, they are alone in the cockpit. Just the two of them and the inexorable emptiness of black lonely space for company. A few tiny pricks of light in the distance are the only respite from the bleakness. For Keith, these stars are a reminder of how far he’s come - both literally and figuratively. He once looked up at the stars - great and unreachable masses of burning gas. Now he travels among them.

  
The others begin sounding off. First Lance, then Hunk, then Pidge, and finally, Allura.

  
Keith switches off comms for the night when all sounds have ceased and the paladins and their companions have retired. It is the first time Keith finds himself alone -really alone- with Shiro in quite a while. Keith can feel a strange distance between them, one that is perpetuated by his own reluctance to bridge the gap. It is suffocating. He wonders if Shiro remembers anything about the fight. He wonders if Shiro is really still Shiro. He wonders if it even matters. Or if—

  
“Keith, I-“

  
“You don’t have to talk,” mutters Keith.

  
Ungrateful. Stupid. He has never been so insolent as to interrupt Shiro. But he isn’t able to stand this. If Shiro talks, everything crumbles. Keith crumbles. The silence is Keith’s final defense against falling apart. The hardest part of all of this is that he can’t comprehend exactly why he feels this way.

  
From what little Keith can see of his face, Shiro looks taken aback, but not offended. Instead, he gives an understated expression of sorrow and regret. His brow is furrowed and his lips are downturned ever so slightly. It is an expression Keith remembers well - Shiro looked like this the day he told Keith about his troubles with the Kerberos mission.

  
Understanding blooms in the back of Keith’s mind. The only reason for sorrow and regret... is the fight.

  
He remembers.

  
“I... I feel like we should,” Shiro says hesitantly.

  
Keith is silent as he mulls it over. There had been so much in his mind until the moment that Shiro spoke. It is like he is a balloon and Shiro’s words are the needle.

  
“Okay,” Keith says, relenting – He never could say no to Shiro. “About what?”

  
Shiro bites his lower lip in contemplation and Keith curses the heat in his chest that follows. He wishes his peripheral vision is less sharp. Shiro further stokes the fire by placing a heavy hand -his only hand- on Keith’s shoulder.

  
“About... about us,” Shiro says, still hesitant, as if afraid of how Keith might react. “About what happened before.”

  
“It’s all a bit of a blur now,” Keith says truthfully, gripping the control handles tightly.

  
There is a creature in his belly, one that rattles the cage Keith has carefully built around it. It bellows and churns and greedily savors the pleasure of the sensation on his shoulder. For the good it is doing, the cage might have been made of paper. It is ironic that the one who calmed and centered Keith is also the one who has the power to unintentionally galvanize and provoke him.

  
He attempts to mollify the monster inside using a deep-breathing technique Shiro taught him. Breathe in, count to five, breathe out, count to five.

  
“Keith,” Shiro says softly. “I wanted to apologize for—“

  
“It’s okay,” Keith cuts in, berating himself for interrupting Shiro yet again. “Like you said. That thing wasn’t you.”

  
Shiro pauses and regards Keith with an unreadable gaze.

  
“This probably won’t make sense,” begins Shiro. “But it feels like me. The memories of the clone... they’re mine. I remember them as if I was there. Like I was the one trying to.. to kill you.”

  
Keith’s mind goes blank again. It is easier to separate the two entities rather than accept the one he fought is the same man standing besides him. The bliss of ignorance fades.

  
Keith finally looks up.

  
White hair. Gray eyes. Parted lips.

  
The beast catches his breath in his throat, preventing Keith from exhaling completely.

  
He had almost forgotten how disarming Shiro’s existence could be.

  
Almost.

  
It is different to before, considering the new hair and loss of an arm. But it still causes Keith’s vision to fade around the edges and his chest to burn delightfully.

  
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Keith, somehow gathering some semblance of control.

He isn’t able to bear the thought of Shiro carrying a guilt he does not have to carry. Shiro has already been through too much.

  
The pressure lifts from Keith’s shoulder as Shiro’s hand rises to brush Keith’s scarred cheek.

  
It feels as if the wound is happening again, the heat of Shiro’s fingers igniting his skin. He feels like he might disintegrate into cosmic dust in that moment. And, oh god, he would be more than okay with melting into Shiro’s hand.

  
“Even so...” Shiro whispers.

  
Shiro’s thumb glides over the scar.

  
It’s too much. Too much. Keith’s airways have constricted, and he nearly hyperventilates.

  
Unconsciously and to the chagrin of the beast, Keith’s hand flies up to push Shiro’s hand away. Typical. Keith always did have a curious habit of sabotaging the good things in his life.

  
“Do you remember what I said?” Keith asks, perhaps a bit too harshly.

  
The anticipation is making him writhe in agony. He has an unrelenting desire to know the intimate insides of Shiro’s mind.

  
Shiro looks away and his hand falls to his side.

  
“You told me... I was your brother,” Shiro says quietly.

  
“That isn’t what I mean,” Keith says. “After that.”

  
“You said you loved me,” Shiro says even softer, his words a mere shadow of a breath.

  
There is something distinctly magnetic in the atmosphere. It’s in the way the light of the console screens seems to settle comfortably on Shiro’s gray eyes and hair. The lurid blue makes Shiro look like a damn angel with an artificial halo.

  
And it makes Keith want to throw his arms around Shiro and bury his face in his broad shoulders. It makes him want to blurt out every single thought in his mind right now.

  
But how could Keith tell Shiro that without him, Keith was broken? How was he to say that Shiro was his entire universe? Shiro was his path to follow. What words could hope to convey exactly what Shiro meant to Keith? His past, his present, and all futures he could imagine. Shiro would be there.

  
Friends?

  
Lovers? Kindred spirits?

  
That’s right. It comes flooding back to him. He remembers this moment. A moment that hasn’t yet happened. Back in the quantum abyss, Keith caught numerous slivers of the past and of the future. This one had been shaded with an odd sense of terrible longing. Of deep-set desire. It was not a joyful memory, from what he can remember.

  
“You’re everything to me, Shiro,” Keith tries. “I do love you.”

  
Those words are the closest Keith can get to that ineffable feeling. They’ll have to do for now.

  
_Tell me you love me_ , Keith pleads in his mind, as if Shiro might be able to hear the turmoil in his head and respond in kind. _Three words. Say them back. I’m yours._

  
Before he met Shiro, Keith would stare at the ground because that was all he knew. His world went as far as the soles of his shoes. However drawn he was to the world outside Earth, he never felt like he deserved to look up and witness the beauty of the universe. Not until Shiro.  
Now, he sees supernovas and constellations, meteor showers and solar winds, all somehow contained within the irises of Shiro’s eyes.

  
“You mean a lot to me, too,” Shiro finally says, averting his gaze once more. The light dissipates from those eyes during a pregnant pause. “I think... I’m going to get some rest. We can talk more tomorrow. Good night Keith.”

  
It is a non-answer that makes Keith’s eyes tear up. It isn’t a no. It isn’t a yes. It’s a reply that stands on the precipice, walking the wire.  
Shiro turns to leave and walks away with Keith’s heart ensconced in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the last night Shiro spends in the Black Lion. After the space pirates fiasco the following day, Shiro moves into Pidge’s lion under the pretense of keeping her company. But Keith can’t help but feel like he misspoke. It’s all his fault. He pushed too far, said too much. Shiro doesn’t like him that way, that much is clear to Keith.


	2. Tell Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro's perspective now.

Shiro isn’t sure what to do. It’s Keith. His friend. And yet he gets the impression that there’s something different. Something else to their relationship. Something new. Brand new.

  
Shiro hasn’t felt this way since... since Adam. It’s like the universe he once knew has been shattered and rebuilt from ground zero. Shiro isn’t sure what is up or down in this newfound land. He isn’t sure how to proceed without overstepping bounds and acting foolish. He desperately needs this space away from Keith to figure things out.

  
Why couldn’t he say it back? Why had he felt the need to run far away when Keith said it for the second time?

  
_The first time to this version of me_ , Shiro corrects himself.

  
He heaves a soft sigh wrought with frustration and pinches his forehead. This is too much to handle on top of the recent turn of events. Three years... lost. Gone.

  
How much has changed?

  
He thinks of Adam once more. He’s probably found another boyfriend by now. Someone else to love and protect. Surprisingly, the thought doesn’t irk Shiro like it might’ve a year ago. He remembers the relationship fondly, though it ended in flames.

  
A memory resurfaces. Shiro is 14, a fresh face in the Galaxy Garrison. An olive-skinned boy, the same age, sits across from Shiro in the mess hall and enthusiastically introduces himself.

  
Another memory. Shiro is 15, the top cadet at the academy. All eyes are on him. He has never felt more vulnerable and self-conscious in his abilities in the wake of finding out about his degenerative disease. Adam finds Shiro crying in a supply closet.

  
Shiro is jolted back to the present by Pidge’s concerned voice.

  
“Shiro?” she queries. “Are you alright?”

  
“I’m fine,” he replies, looking up and mustering a half-smile. “Why?”

  
“Oh,” she says sheepishly, as if she’s intruded on something intimate. “You’ve looked kind of out of it for the past five minutes.”

  
“It’s nothing,” Shiro insists. “I’ve just... got a lot on my mind.”

  
Pidge nods.

  
“We all do. Three years... I wonder how Mom and Dad are doing on Earth...” Pidge trails, focusing her attention back to the view-screen. She brings her legs to her chest, curling up into a ball.

  
“I’m sure they’re all fine,” Shiro reassures Pidge in the most certain voice he could speak with. “Commander Holt is the smartest and most capable man I’ve ever met. He can handle whatever comes his way.”

  
“I know this is hard,” Keith’s voice comes in through the communications speakers. “But we can get through this. Together.”

  
“Yeah,” Pidge says with a sad smile. “Thanks, guys.”

  
Mirroring Pidge’s now faraway gaze, Shiro returns to his incessant thoughts. Of Adam. No... of Keith. And of Acxa.

  
Acxa. The mere mention of that name gives Shiro a mild headache on top of the already agonizing migraine from the soul transplant. Shiro doesn’t have to search far into his mind palace to understand why.

  
He’s jealous. Supremely jealous.

  
Because of what? Keith saved Acxa once and exchanged a meaningful look with her.

  
It is downright infuriating that such a small detail is having such a gargantuan effect on Shiro. There is no logical reason why he should be feeling this way.

  
Yet he is.

  
A shifting relationship should be easy to handle after everything Shiro’s been through - enslavement, amputation, an intergalactic war, literal death. But a year spent in the endless void of the astral plane within the Black Lion seems like a breeze compared to the notion of confronting these feelings. Feelings that threaten to unravel Shiro’s very existence.

  
Shiro is a self-described obstinate fool. This problem, he can solve. He has a year and a half to navigate the dilemma, if the journey back to Earth goes according to plan. What better time to start than the present? He just has to start thinking logically.

  
He loves Keith.

  
That much is clear.

  
In what way?

  
This question is much harder to answer.

  
An unbidden memory that is purple and blurry around the edges fills Shiro’s mind, as if some entity inside him is trying to point him towards some conclusion. It is an image of Keith in his Marmora uniform, except he is not the same. This Keith is taller. More self-assured. Shiro, or rather, Kuron, is stunned into a stammer. Not once, not twice, but three separate instances of being so shocked that he could not properly formulate words. Like a lovestruck fool.

  
It should be clear what this memory means. At the same time, it isn’t really technically Shiro who experienced it, so shouldn’t that factor into the equation in some way?

  
Shiro tries to remember his first time seeing Keith this way, the way the clone did. It was in the astral plane, but there wasn’t time then to admire the man Keith had become. Shiro had been too busy trying to hold everything together to notice anything different about him.

  
The next time he saw him was in a dream, when Shiro was fighting for control over the body. He remembers, upon hearing Keith’s shattered voice like a lighthouse during a stormy night, that Kuron relinquished control and allowed Shiro to take the body.

  
And then he was awake, with Keith hovering above him, a soft look on his face.

  
Keith had leaned in for a hug, and for a split second, something sparked in Shiro’s heart. For a split-second, Shiro was expecting lips on his own.

  
Shiro taps a silent beat on the metal next to his remaining hand, a tic he picked up during his imprisonment at the hands of the Galra. He remembers, now, why he had been so bad at relationships back on Earth. Trying to figure his brain out is... deeply unnerving.

  
“Hey, Pidge?” Shiro asks in a quiet voice. “Could you turn comms off for a moment?

  
“Huh? Oh.” she replies, glancing up, apparently lost in her thoughts till Shiro spoke. Pidge taps a few commands into her console before continuing. “Yeah. We’re muted. What’s going on, Shiro?”

  
Shiro needs someone objective. Someone brilliant, like Pidge.

  
“I... Um... Do you think Keith.. likes me?” Shiro stammers out, rather like a blithering schoolgirl asking about her first crush.

  
He’s too curious to be embarrassed. This isn’t really the question he was originally planning to ask, but he supposes it is something he wants to know. Badly. If he knows exactly how Keith feels, maybe that could solve everything.

  
“Shiro,” Pidge says with an austere expression. “Do you really have to ask that question? You should’ve seen him back when you went missing. He was devastated.”

  
“Right,” says Shiro, emboldened. “Yeah. Of course. But I meant—“

  
“I know what you meant, Shiro,” Pidge cuts in. “Again, do you really have to ask?”

  
She is curt in a way that Shiro appreciates. Pidge has never been known to mince words, a trait she picked up from Colleen.

  
“I just... don’t know what to do,” Shiro, says, sighing for the umpteenth time.

  
“It’s clear to me,” says Pidge, shrugging. “You two should really just make out and get it over with already."

  
Shiro nearly chokes on his own spit at that.

  
“P-Pidge,” Shiro utters, his cheeks coloring.

  
“What?” she asks, a devious grin spreading across her face. “It’s true. "Everyone else thinks so, too.”

  
“Everyone?” Shiro demands.

  
“Oh yeah,” she says, still smirking. “From the moment he rescued you that day you fell to Earth.”

  
“But that’s not— I wasn’t... we weren’t—“

  
“Hey Pidge, don’t you think it’s weird that Keith is always hanging out with Shiro?” Pidge says, in a high pitched voice clearly meant to mimic Lance’s. “I mean he never hangs out with us, do you think they’re... together?”

  
“Did he really say that? Lance is usually the last one to—“

  
“Oh, Pidge,” Pidge continues, but this time with a poorly done Altean accent. “Do you happen to know if Shiro and Keith are betrothed yet?”

  
“Okay,” Shiro sighs. “Alright, I get it.”

  
“The point is,” Pidge says analytically, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose (Shiro can practically see a cartoonish sheen refracting off her lens). “Don’t waste time thinking about what could go wrong. You love him. He loves you. Everyone but the two of you can see it.”

  
Shiro’s left hand comes up to touch the metal remnants of his Galra arm.

  
“Actually,” Shiro says slowly, finally understanding something that had eluded him up to that point. “I think.. I think Keith confessed to me?”

  
Pidge suddenly brakes, yanking back on the Green Lion’s pilot controls. Shiro is thrown unceremoniously to the floor with a loud _thunk_. Thankfully, his robotic stump takes the brunt of the impact.

  
“What?!” Pidge screeches, her face alight with emotion.

  
At the same time, Keith’s voice comes through the comms, filled with consternation.

  
“Guys?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”

  
Shiro catches a mischievous glint in Pidge’s eye as he clambers to his feet.

  
“Pidge,” he warns. “Pidge, no. Don’t—“

  
But she’s already turned back around and punching a command into the console.

  
“Keith,” she yells. “Keith, Shiro loves you. Like, _love_ loves you. I’m sorry that I had to tell you, but he’s an oblivious idiot. Not that you’re not one, too. Still, you obviously figured it out faster.”

  
Pidge turns over her shoulder and gives Shiro a very smug look.

  
Shiro would very much like to sink into a puddle of nothingness right now, but he settles for crossing his arm over his chest and glaring at Pidge.

  
“Oh thank goodness,” comes Hunk’s relieved voice. “We thought this would never happen.”

  
Shiro thinks about opening the sunroof door and floating out to a peaceful death in space.

  
“Congratulations!” cries Allura. “You must let me plan the wedding celebration!”

  
“Yes!” Coran hollers with uncontained glee. “It’ll be the affair of the century!”

  
Maybe if he pleads with Black, she'll take him back into her void.

  
“The two of you have my blessing,” Krolia interjects coolly.

  
“Mom!” Keith moans.

  
Pidge snickers besides Shiro and Lance’s chortle is added to the commotion.

  
Is it too late to turn himself over to Ezor and Zethrid? They’ll probably mercifully execute him if he asks nicely.

  
Before Shiro can fantasize further about release from his mortification, a dazzling flash of white-blue light indicates the arrival of the space wolf.

  
The wolf looks at Shiro expectantly and whines. Without hesitation, Shiro places his hand onto the wolf’s neck. Pidge and the scene around him dematerializes, and he is standing in the Black Lion’s cockpit.

  
Krolia smiles at Shiro.

  
“I’ll give you two some time,” she says.

  
She exits the cockpit, the doors hissing shut behind her.

  
“Comms?” Shiro asks.

  
“Closed,” Keith says.

  
Indeed, the lively chatter continues without them, the buzz of Allura and Coran planning what sounds like an alarmingly dangerous matrimony coming through the speakers.

  
They are facing each other, and Shiro can feel the energy rushing between them. It’s electrifying.

  
“Keith, I’m sorry for not figuring it out sooner,” Shiro starts, his face feeling hot. “I just... I thought you didn’t feel the same way I did. So when you said what you said... I got scared. That’s why I left.”

  
“Oh, just shut up and kiss me,” Keith breathes.

  
Before Shiro can properly process what has happened, Keith has his arms around Shiro’s neck, and tongue in Shiro’s mouth.

  
_Arrogant_ , Shiro thinks.

  
Still, he responds in kind, leaning into Keith, and fully immersing himself in this long-awaited moment of shared breath and love.


End file.
